1:72 Hasegawa Boeing F/A-18F Super Hornet

[Navy Bird]

I almost forgot that I signed up for this Group Build. So, OK, what should I build? I have a lot of Hornets in the stash, but the two-seat flavour of the Super Bug and especially the VFA-2 marking scheme (further down below) caught my fancy. I suspect everyone knows this kit but for completeness I'll add some photos of the box and the stuff inside. First, the specific Hasegawa kit I'll be using;

 

 

There is a bit of styrene in the box.

 

 

 

 

 

The canopy managed to escape from its sprue but no harm seems to have been done. Note the black vinyl bushings which will be used for attaching the tailplanes.

 

 

This wouldn't be a Navy Bird project if I built it out of the box, so of course I have some goodies to tart her up. First, a nice photoetch set and canopy masks from Eduard (note that some dastardly fellow stole the seat harnesses for his F-14D build):

 

 

As always seems to be the case with these pre-painted PE instrument panels the grey is the wrong colour. Luckily I have a big magnifying glass and a brush with 3 or 4 hairs on it so I can try to paint those areas the correct cockpit colour.

 

Next, resin exhausts from Aires (based on the last two projects where I've used Aires exhausts I have no confidence that these will work without modification - but we'll see):

 

 

Some resin wheels and tyres from Res/Kit:

 

 

And new resin wings with the flaps and slats down from RES-IM:

 

 

Lastly (for now) is a nice sheet of stickers from TwoBobs with the colourful markings for a CAG bird from VFA-2 Bounty Hunters as she appeared in 2005 on the USS Abraham Lincoln. I always liked this scheme on their F-14 Tomcats and it looks just as sharp on the Super Hornet.

 

 

Somewhere I have some resin SJU-17 ejection seats but I will have to go digging for them. The Hasegawa kit does not feature the Bard stacks but according to my research this specific aircraft was not built with them and had not yet retrofitted them in 2005.

 

So that's the plan anyway - subject to change of course. Ta for now.

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Wings unlevel]

One to watch!

[modelling minion]

Very nice choice.

I agree completely about the VFA-2 markings, they look great.

[giemme]

Ready!  

 

Ciao

[Navy Bird]

The Eduard photoetch doesn't look too bad on the Hasegawa cockpit tub, although methinks they left the lights on in the flat panel screens.

 

 

Some more gubbins probably need to be added. Somehow I managed to paint over the wrong grey colour on the PE but don't use a magnifying lens to look at it. I also folded up some PE rudder pedals, but they are virtually impossible to see.

 

I also managed to find the elusive resin ejection seats but guess what - they don't fit in the cockpit tub as they're too wide. By a long shot.,,my typical luck. That means I have to do something with these (what was Hasegawa thinking of?):

 

 

This should be fun!    

 

I was thinking about picking up the Aires resin cockpit set, but after reading the review at IPMS USA I decided against it. Apparently you have to sand the thickness of the fuselage sidewalls wafer thin, in addition to doing the same thing with the resin pit. I had enough of that kind of fun when I built my F/A-18C. I have a big stash and I'm getting older, I don't have time to sand all day. Why does Aires design things that way? Man, design and cast them so they fit the kit! No one will notice if they're not 100% accurate. It's the detail folks want.

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Alan P]

4 hours ago, Navy Bird said:

Why does Aires design things that way? Man, design and cast them so they fit the kit! No one will notice if they're not 100% accurate. It's the detail folks want.

I wish this was the case too! But the accuracy folks make all the noise, it seems 🤔

[giemme]

5 hours ago, Navy Bird said:

they left the lights on in the flat panel screens.

Tub looking the biz, Bill  But I think you should probably paint over those screens... 

 

Ciao

[gingerbob]

9 hours ago, Navy Bird said:

Man, design and cast them so they fit the kit! No one will notice if they're not 100% accurate.

 

Yeah, I read a thread just the other day where someone was complaining that these aftermarket things (instrument panel) aren't actually "to scale accurate", and neither are the kits.  He didn't seem satisfied with the suggestion that aircraft skin scaled down accurately to 1/48... or 1/72... or 1/144... would be impossible.

[Alan P]

4 hours ago, gingerbob said:

 

Yeah, I read a thread just the other day where someone was complaining that these aftermarket things (instrument panel) aren't actually "to scale accurate", and neither are the kits.  He didn't seem satisfied with the suggestion that aircraft skin scaled down accurately to 1/48... or 1/72... or 1/144... would be impossible.

Wait till they find out they're made of plastic!

[Navy Bird]

Thank Zeus for small favours...I found another set of resin SJU-17 seats that fit into the cockpit tub. Whew! I was starting to get worried about what to do with those Lindberg seats that came with the Hasegawa kit.   

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Navy Bird]

A bit more work was done today. First, the resin seats were painted up and garnished with some PE belts from somewhere. These are a big improvement over what came with the kit - which have to be some of the worst ejection seats I have seen in a modern Hasegawa kit. I wasn't kidding with the Lindberg comment.

 

 

I tell ya - these things keep getting smaller as I get older. These were in a zip-loc bag with no ID, so I'm not sure where they came from.  

 

Next I thought I'd have a look at the Aires exhausts. First, though, a short description of what Hasegawa engineered in this area. Hasegawa decided to use nylon bushings to hold the locating pegs from the tailplanes, keeping them in place with friction. I guess this was so you could move them slightly up and down (independently!) as you bring her in for a 1:72 carrier landing. To hold the bushing in place there is a two piece crossbar that stretches across the width of the rear fuselage. The exhaust petals have no interior detail at all, so you can see straight through to this crossbar. Yikes!

 

The Aires resin parts have a nice deep exhaust tube and engine exit face, plus PE afterburner ignition rings. However, the crossbar and bushings cannot be installed as they will interfere. No problem, the holes in the fuselage side are correct for the tailplane pegs. I'll have to forego the playing and glue them in place.

 

But wait, there's more! The pegs have to be snipped off leaving only a wee bit protruding so they don't hit the exhaust tube. Crazy, but doable.

 

But wait, there's yet even more! To use the Aires bits, you have to saw off the locating ridges for the kit parts - these guys:

 

 

Then, you have to get out a humongous drill and open up the holes as they're too small for the resin exhaust tubes. Since I didn't have the exact size drill bit required (the tubes are 0.414 inches in diameter) I used a 3/8 inch bit instead. There remains a bit of sanding required to get the correct sized opening. As you can see, I was lucky to not run out of plastic!

 

 

And, you may notice the fuselage proper has been hacked together. A few seams to clean up and...no, wait, I need to put the wings on first. The resin wings from RES-IM fit well with only a slight modification to the fuselage (thinning of a small portion of the top fuselage where the wing attaches).

 

More to come I'm sure. Sometime. Maybe tomorrow. Or the next day.   

 

Cheers,

Bill

 

PS. I wonder how much Aires resin I have in my stash - several weeks worth of sanding I suspect.

[giemme]

Aires strikes again, one could say.... But you strike harder, as usual

Bang seats looking the biz, also

 

Ciao

[Navy Bird]

11 hours ago, giemme said:

Aires strikes again, one could say.... But you strike harder, as usual

Bang seats looking the biz, also

 

Ha! Navy Bird the Aires Striker. I've probably said this before, but in my experience it's pretty rare for the Aires resin bits to fit without some major modification of the kit. In a lot of the cases, sure, I understand. The quality of the detail in the Aires resin parts is outstanding, but they can't cast a cockpit tub that fits between the fuselage sides? CMK can, they do it all the time. Crazy.

 

Yeah, the bang seats look OK. I may add some decals to simulate the placards. I was shocked when I saw the kit seats - Hasegawa must have farmed the tooling for those out to Lindberg. No, wait, that's not fair. Lindberg kits usually never had any seats at all.

 

*****

 

The bits from the RES-IM wing set have been removed from the casting blocks. Not difficult, but delicate - especially around the flap actuators and hinges.

 

 

And that's all I did on the Super Bug today. Most of my modelling time was spent masking and painting the Oxford Blue on my A&AEE Phantom.

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Navy Bird]

Only a month or so later...

 

The wings and flaps are on. These took a little bit of adjusting, but I think they will do the trick. One thing is for sure, the panel lines and rivets on the resin match the Hasegawa plastic nicely.

 

 

 

There is some minor filler work to do, but overall I'm happy with the fit of the resin wings.   

 

Cheers,

Bill

[giemme]

6 hours ago, Navy Bird said:

but overall I'm happy with the fit of the resin wings.

And you should as well be, they look the biz!  

 

Ciao

[Navy Bird]

As I continue to work on the seams, I thought I would add the landing gear. The locating "pins" are quite hefty and produce a very secure fit and subsequent alignment. I think it would be quite difficult to screw it up. (Good news for me!) Once the gear legs and assorted actuators were in, I added some good old fiddly photoetch from the Eduard set. This included some hydraulic lines in the front gear well, brake lines on both the nose and main gear, and a bracket in the nose gear well that will eventually hold some photoetch greeblies.

 

 

 

The torque links for the nose gear were also replaced with photoetch. There is an additional hydraulic line that will run along the side of the nose gear retraction strut.

 

Also in the PE set are covers for the chaff/flare dispensers. There are four of these dispensers, two each in front of the main gear wells. The kit moulded all four open so you can see the 24 individual slots for the chaff/flares. I don't have a lot of photos that show the underside of VFA-2 Super Bugs, but those which show the underside typically have the outboard dispensers covered. I also have seen photos where all four are open and all four closed. I haven't decided what to do; I'll probably use two covers just to mix it up.

 

The Eduard PE set is a godsend relative to the antennae. For example, the IFF antenna that is on the top spine is moulded very thick in the kit. The kit part is 1mm thick which equates to 72mm thick, nearly three inches, in real life. Ah, I don't think so. The PE will look much more authentic to scale. Eduard provide both the blade antennae and a PE base plate which will help secure the part. Although I've "butt-joined" PE blade antenna in the past, they have a tendency to come off if you look at them sideways. I like Eduard's solution.

 

I still have some seam work to do, and then I'll get some primer on to see how bad it looks. Filling and sanding seams is my least favourite part of modelling - along with assembly, digesting resin dust, fiddling around with photoetch, masking canopies, airbrushing, detail painting, and decaling.   

 

Cheers,

Bill

[giemme]

On 05/03/2022 at 01:14, Navy Bird said:

As I continue to work on the seams, I thought I would add the landing gear.

Of course.....  

 

Although these struts, being made for a carrier based AC, do look very strong also in their plastic version, so I feel less shivering in watching this than most of your previous models...

 

PE additions lokking the biz, BTW

 

Ciao 

 

 

[Navy Bird]

42 minutes ago, giemme said:

Although these struts, being made for a carrier based AC, do look very strong also in their plastic version, so I feel less shivering in watching this than most of your previous models...

 

True fact. It would take a major hit to knock off the landing gear. Wait, I have a 6-year old grandson...and he can reach the workbench.   

 

*****

 

After a quick airbrush session, the underside is all nice and shiny FS36375. You perhaps noticed in the above photos that two holes were drilled out for the centreline tank. I used the starter holes that were on the inside of the lower fuselage - but I've just noticed that the holes are not on centre. WTF? (which stands for Way Too Funny, by the way.) I estimated they're off by a bit less than a millimetre. Hmm, the tank is a tight fit between the intake tunnels as it is - and it's fugly.

 

I think the Super Bug looks so much better without any external tanks at all. Of course, you almost never see photos that way because the aircraft is very thirsty and has a lousy internal fuel-only range. However, I found one photo of this specific VFA-2 aircraft with no tanks - woo hoo! Now I can dodge reality and prove it. Of course, I now have to fill those two off-centre holes...

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Navy Bird]

You may remember this pic from above:

 

 

I decided to remove these from the casting blocks today, and was surprised to find the word "cut" at the center of each tyre. I've never had to do that with ResKit wheels before. Anyway, this would have been easier if the section in the center of each tyre wasn't so thick. I ended up drilling first, and then trying to sand to get a smooth surface. The ugly results:

 

 

The wheel rims seem to fit in OK, so I guess the proof is in the pudding. What a pain though.

 

In the paint booth department, I realised that I don't have a paint booth. Nor do I have a respirator. This is perhaps why my doctor told me I have "technicolour lung." Not to be put aside by such trivialities, I ventured ahead and finished the base paint scheme on the aircraft (FS36375 on the underside, FS36320 up top). It still needs some clean up here and there, and there are some seams I'm still not happy with.

 

The photos show that the trailing edge of the control surfaces, and the leading edge of the vertical tails and stabilizers, have a strip of darker grey paint - never noticed that before, but Hasegawa shows these areas as FS35237, and the model even has panel lines to show where to mask. I wonder what this darker area is...

 

The conformal IFF antenna (square protrusion on top of the forward fuselage between the windscreen and the cannon opening) looks to be a darker grey as well. This is not shown in the instructions but is obvious in photos. I'll use FS35237 for this too unless someone knows different.

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Wings unlevel]

18 hours ago, Navy Bird said:

two holes were drilled out for the centreline tank. I used the starter holes that were on the inside of the lower fuselage - but I've just noticed that the holes are not on centre. WTF?

I had that too! I’d just assumed I’d messed up my drilling…Other than not looking right it it’s also important for the tank to be straight and properly centred so it doesn’t foul the MLG  doors.

 

11 hours ago, Navy Bird said:

I'll use FS35237 for this too unless someone knows different.

Weirdly my boxing called for Mr Color’s burnt iron, which I used, but doesn’t look right…

[Navy Bird]

6 hours ago, Wings unlevel said:

I had that too! I’d just assumed I’d messed up my drilling…Other than not looking right it it’s also important for the tank to be straight and properly centred so it doesn’t foul the MLG  doors.

 

Luckily, the pylon seems wide enough so that I can drill the holes oversize and then shift the pylon on centre, but still covering up the holes. That's the idea anyway.

 

6 hours ago, Wings unlevel said:

Weirdly my boxing called for Mr Color’s burnt iron, which I used, but doesn’t look right…

 

In this photo, it looks the same colour as the trailing edge of the rudder:

 

 

That said, the strip on the trailing edge of the rudder sometimes appears darker than the aircraft top colour (FS36320), and sometimes lighter. (Note there is also a strip on the leading edge of the vertical fin.) The edges around the horizontal stabilizers usually look lighter than the top colour. I wonder if these are some kind of metallic that looks different depending on the lighting. Maybe @Tailspin Turtle knows.

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Tailspin Turtle]

29 minutes ago, Navy Bird said:

 

Luckily, the pylon seems wide enough so that I can drill the holes oversize and then shift the pylon on centre, but still covering up the holes. That's the idea anyway.

 

 

In this photo, it looks the same colour as the trailing edge of the rudder:

 

 

That said, the strip on the trailing edge of the rudder sometimes appears darker than the aircraft top colour (FS36320), and sometimes lighter. (Note there is also a strip on the leading edge of the vertical fin.) The edges around the horizontal stabilizers usually look lighter than the top colour. I wonder if these are some kind of metallic that looks different depending on the lighting. Maybe @Tailspin Turtle knows.

 

Cheers,

Bill

I regret to report that I don’t know but it looks like Corogard in effect, a erosion-resistant paint that the U.S. Navy required to be applied to the leading edges of the wings and tail surfaces (initially jets) in the early 1950s (also see http://tailspintopics.blogspot.com/2012/01/corogard.html). Looking closely at the picture, it is also on the leading edge, tip, and trailing edge of the horizontal stabilizer. The variation in the perceived color/reflectivity is also reminiscent of Corogard because it was a clear coat infused with aluminized powder. 

[Navy Bird]

39 minutes ago, Tailspin Turtle said:

I regret to report that I don’t know but it looks like Corogard in effect, a erosion-resistant paint that the U.S. Navy required to be applied to the leading edges of the wings and tail surfaces (initially jets) in the early 1950s (also see http://tailspintopics.blogspot.com/2012/01/corogard.html). Looking closely at the picture, it is also on the leading edge, tip, and trailing edge of the horizontal stabilizer. The variation in the perceived color/reflectivity is also reminiscent of Corogard because it was a clear coat infused with aluminized powder. 

 

I think you're right. For some reason I thought that Corogard was no longer used with the introduction of TPS, but I just found this photo and the edge of the horizontal stabilizers and the leading edges of the wings sure do look like Corogard (although not as wide of a strip as I remember from the high-viz days).

 

 

Most photos I have of the VFA-2 CAG bird, which I'm modelling, don't show the bard stacks and aren't weathered this much. I can only guess that my other photos were prior to the retrofit of the stacks and when the paint was relatively fresh (as in my previous photo). While on the subject of paint, the tip of the radome usually appears in a slightly lighter shade of grey than the rest of the radome, which often looks somewhat lighter than the fuselage proper. Anyone else see this?

 

The conformal antenna in front of the windscreen looks dark grey to my eyes. But I'm old...     👴

 

Does anyone know if the FLIR pod is a common fit to the Super Hornet? Most photos seem to show it.

 

Cheers,

Bill

[giemme]

Mildly off topic, but that last pic of yours entices my will of building a well worn Navy model, Bill....

 

Ciao 

[Navy Bird]

8 hours ago, giemme said:

Mildly off topic, but that last pic of yours entices my will of building a well worn Navy model, Bill....

 

Have at it. Get your salt shaker ready.    🧂

 

Heavily weathered aircraft remind me of having a messy room when I was a teenager. Now that I'm all grown up, I make my bed everyday and wash my clothes. Heck, I even paint the walls every now and then.        

 

Cheers,

Bill